Vulnerability Note VU#698390

RealPlayer ActiveX control contains buffer overflow in "ShowPreferences"

Overview

The RealPlayer ActiveX control contains a stack-based buffer overflow in the ShowPreferences method. This may permit a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the user's system.

I. Description

RealNetworks RealPlayer is a multimedia application that allows users to view local and remote audio/video content. The RealPlayer ActiveX control allows web authors to embed the RealPlayer application in HTML documents and have control over it. One of the exported functions of the RealPlayer ActiveX control is HandleAction, which executes a method or action. When the HandleAction function is used to call the ShowPreferences method, the RealPlayer preferences dialog is displayed, showing the specified category and page.

The ShowPreferences method concatenates its two arguments and then makes an unchecked call to sprintf(). By passing long arguments to ShowPreferences, an attacker can cause a stack-based buffer overflow to occur. Any browser that supports ActiveX may be affected, including IE and other software that uses MSHTML.

II. Impact

By convincing a user to view an HTML document (e.g., a web page or HTML email messsage), an attacker could execute arbitrary commands or code with the privileges of the user. The attacker could take any action as the user. If the user has administrative privileges, the attacker could take complete control of the user's system.

III. Solution

Install update

Install an update, as specified by the RealNetworks security advisory.

Disable Active scripting and ActiveX controls

To protect against this and other vulnerabilities in ActiveX controls, consider disabling Active scripting and ActiveX controls in the Internet Zone as described in the Malicious Web Scripts FAQ. Note that disabling Active scripting and ActiveX controls in the Internet Zone will reduce the functionality of some web sites.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Notified	Date Updated
RealNetworks	Vulnerable	24-Jan-2005

References

http://www.ngssoftware.com/advisories/real-01full.txt
http://service.real.com/help/faq/security/040928_player/EN/
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/12311
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/ntbugtraq/2005-q1/0046.html

Credit

Thanks to NGSSoftware Insight Security Research for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Will Dormann.

Other Information

Date Public:	2004-09-28
Date First Published:	2005-01-24
Date Last Updated:	2005-01-27
CERT Advisory:
CVE-ID(s):
NVD-ID(s):
US-CERT Technical Alerts:
Metric:	14.63
Document Revision:	15

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